The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

26

  "Hell," said Brasseur. "If it hadn't been three years already since our daughter was born, I might have remembered how my wife behaved, and what she complained of?damn it, if we'd been a couple of half-witted fishwives from the faubourgs, we'd have guessed long ago!" He banged a fist down on the desk and sat fuming for a moment before shouting for the subinspector to bring Nicolas Joubert in.

  "Well then," Brasseur said when the essential formalities of name, residence, place of birth, and age had been completed, "you're carrying on with Madame Saint-Landry, aren't you?"

  "I can scarcely deny it, I suppose," Nicolas said, with a smirk.

  "How d'you know her?"

  "I think I can answer that," said Aristide, as he leaned against the wall by the door. "I expect Derville introduced them."

  Nicolas nodded. "Derville's a friend of my brother's and he introduced us to Monsieur Saint-Landry and his family about four years ago. Saint-Landry had some connections in the papermaking industry that Pierre thought could be useful."

  "How long has this affair of yours been going on?"

  "Since about three months after we met."

  "And you've been keeping your assignations once or twice a week, I gather? Always at that same hotel?"

  "Various hotels. We stuck to the same days of the week; that way Eug?nie could claim she was going to a meeting of her ladies' charitable society, the Sisters of the Dove, or whatever it was. Actually she hadn't been to a meeting in months." He straightened in his seat and stared at Brasseur. "If you think I did away with Saint-Landry, then you're mistaken. Why would I have wanted to kill him?"

  "You're sleeping with his wife," Brasseur pointed out. "What's more-"

  "And I adore her," Nicolas interrupted, "and look forward to every hour we spend together, but that doesn't mean I want to marry her, or anyone. Monsieur, I'm quite happy with the way matters stand, thank you very much, and I'm not yet eager to settle down and produce heirs. I leave that to my brother."

  "Where were you on the evening of the ninth of this month?"

  "The ninth?" His face cleared. "I told you-I had nothing to do with it! I wasn't even in Paris-I was in Lyon, where Pierre sent me, haggling over the price of paper with the Montgolfiers."

  "Monsieur Joubert," Aristide said, "do you think Madame Saint-Landry is as content as you are with 'the way matters stand,' as you put it? You may prefer to remain a bachelor, unburdened by a wife and family, but what about the lady?"

  He watched Nicolas as the young man leaned back in his chair and pondered the question. "She did keep harping on how monotonous her marriage was, and her life," he admitted after a moment's thought. "That she was tied to the dullest man in Paris, that he had no imagination even in bed. I fancy I satisfied her in that regard," he added, with a wink.

  "Might she have been picturing herself as Madame Joubert?"

  "Good God," he exclaimed, "surely not." Clearly, Aristide thought, the idea had never occurred to him. "Although?although about four months ago, she actually began to make noises about 'If only I were free, we could be together always,' and so on. I had no intention of committing myself to being together always, so I didn't pay her much notice, and she gave up after a while. You know how women are, always hinting at things."

  "You didn't take it seriously, that she might have been suggesting that you two would be happier with her husband out of the way?"

  "Of course I didn't! What do you take me for?"

  "Monsieur Joubert," Brasseur growled, "did you know you were soon to be a father?"

  "A father?" Nicolas echoed him, astonished.

  "She's pregnant."

  "Who's to say it's not her husband's?"

  "Her husband would probably have disagreed."

  Nicolas shrugged. "Well, I'm certainly not going to admit paternity. Who needs that?"

  "That's the last thing Madame Saint-Landry would want," Aristide said. "As long as the child's status as Saint-Landry's heir remains uncontested, she'll have official control of the purse strings for twenty-five years. A persuasive reason to murder Saint-Landry before it becomes evident to anyone-especially him-that she's with child?don't you think?"

  "Maybe you thought it would be worth giving up bachelorhood to marry the rich widow?" Brasseur said, fixing Nicolas with an unblinking stare.

  "I had nothing to do with it," Nicolas insisted, paling. "I wasn't in Paris, and you can't prove I was. I was away in Lyon for ten days-ask my brother. Or you can write to the Montgolfier manufactory and ask them."

  "Oh, you can be sure we will, monsieur," Brasseur said, making a note and shouting for Paumier.

  "And don't you go trying to accuse Madame Saint-Landry of such an abominable crime. You can't imagine a woman like that taking a knife to a full-grown man!"

  "If you were in Lyon that week, you can't very well give her an alibi, can you?"

  "Well?no. No, if it comes to that, I can't. But you must see I'm right, monsieur."

  Brasseur sighed as the subinspector entered. "Monsieur Joubert," he told Nicolas, "I'll have to hold you on suspicion until we get confirmation from the Montgolfier manufactory, or an innkeeper, or what have you, that you were down in Lyon on the ninth and tenth. You can give names and addresses to Paumier here."

  "But that'll take days!"

  "Four days or so for a letter and a reply, by the express mail van," Aristide said. "Maybe longer, depending on the schedule. You'll have plenty of time to rethink your policy of only carrying on intrigues with married women, won't you?"

  "I'll send word to your brother where he can find you," Brasseur added kindly, as Paumier escorted away the fuming Nicolas.

  "I'm afraid he is right about Eug?nie," Aristide said gloomily, after they had disappeared. "We know a woman, especially one Eug?nie's size, couldn't have done it, and anyway her maid can swear she never left her bedchamber that night, or any other."

  "Damn," said Brasseur. "He may be lying through his teeth, of course, but I doubt he'd offer an alibi that's so easy to disprove. And if neither the wife nor the lover did it, then where are we?"

  Aristide gratefully pulled off the soiled, threadbare green coat and donned his own black one before taking the chair Nicolas had vacated. "Is it possible," he said slowly, gnawing at a thumbnail, "that she could have had a second lover?"

  "Two lovers? Where would she find the time?"

  "I don't necessarily mean a long-standing liaison like this with Joubert. But if she is as calculating as we now think, what's to prevent her from ensnaring another man who would be more compliant? A lover to make use of and then discard."

  "She whispers artlessly to Joubert that she'd be happier if she were free, but he doesn't take the hint," Brasseur said, nodding, adding another note to a fresh sheet of paper. "So she finds herself a cat's-paw, a man less cynical than Joubert, and she bats her eyelashes at him in the usual fashion?"

  "Yes. Probably she poses as the helpless lady in distress?you know, she gave me the lady-in-distress look right off, the first day we interviewed her; and then later, I saw her playing the same game with Derville. More than once. And that was despite the fact that Derville admitted, out of her hearing, that he'd once made overtures to her and was rebuffed."

  "Probably because she was already carrying on with Joubert," Brasseur suggested, with a leer.

  "Yes. I don't think she can help it, that instinctive performance of hers, calculated to appeal to all the most chivalrous impulses. But it comes in useful, doesn't it? She sparks a fellow's gallantry with her appealing frailty and then confesses, weeping, to her admirer that her husband only married her for her dowry, and that he beats her, and is a man of unnatural tastes who forces her to do unspeakable things in the bedroom-anything you like that will rouse his manly indignation and stir him into protecting her."

  "And the poor fool's so besotted with her by now," Brasseur grunted, "and so worked up and convinced that this defenseless angel is tied to a fiend, that he'd do anything for her, including disposing of her vile husba
nd."

  "And Eug?nie, you can be sure, will have taken care that not one scrap of evidence, not a single eyewitness, can link her with him. She'll be able to deny everything, to swear before a magistrate that although she might have, in a moment of feminine weakness, committed adultery with another gentleman entirely, a gentleman whom she truly loved, nevertheless she never dreamed poor Monsieur So-and-So, whom she barely knows, would do such a terrible thing, because she never gave him the slightest reason to think, and so on and so on. People might wonder, the authorities might have their suspicions, but there would never be enough proof, beyond the lover's wild, implausible accusations, to have her up on any kind of charge."

  Brasseur scowled. "And the poor fellow is broken on the wheel for murder while Eug?nie enjoys her widowhood and her husband's fortune, and continues to carry on happily with young Joubert."

  "Beaupr?au seemed to believe she was capable of it."

  "Who is he, then-this cat's-paw lover?"

  Aristide thought a moment. "A young man," he said at last. "Only a young man, or a very inexperienced one, would be callow enough to fall hard for a beautiful, older woman and unquestioningly believe everything she told him. And he must have ties to Freemasonry, at least enough to know something of the lore."

  "Well," Brasseur said, rapidly scribbling notes, "and how'd she meet him? It can't be anything too obvious, or the household would have brought him up as a family friend who visited a bit too often for propriety. It couldn't be Monsieur Derville after all, by any chance?" he said suddenly. "He seems to hang about the Saint-Landrys a bit more than most."

  "Derville? Callow? You must be joking."

  "No, that would have been too easy, and of course he'd never have gone to Beaupr?au in a panic like that if he'd committed the murder himself. Though he seemed to be a great admirer of madame, wouldn't you say?"

  "It wasn't madame he went there to see," said Aristide. "Not in the end. It was Sophie. He's going to marry her."

  "But I thought she was-" Brasseur began. He paused and then said, more gently: "I thought it was you she was partial to, Ravel."

  "So did I. If you want to look for a callow young man," he added bitterly, "you should start with me."

  He was silent for a moment, staring straight ahead at the dossiers that filled a sagging bookshelf behind Brasseur's desk.

  "A young man," he repeated, "rather naive, open-hearted, capable of an ardent devotion-superficially familiar with Freemasonry-yet someone whose presence would scarcely be remarked upon?oh, God. It can't be. Anyone but that." He sprang up from his seat, paced across the room, and stared into the cold fireplace. "Oh, God, no."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Moreau, Brasseur. Beaupr?au's valet. I think it was Moreau."

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~